The Time Travelers

The Time Travelers

Director - Ib Melchior

Writers - Ib Melchior, David L. Hewitt

1964 - USA

Stars - Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders

 

A similar adventure to ‘Beyond the Time Barrier’ (1960) with a leap into a future to a dying human race, a quick tour of future doom and some mutants to bring things to a head. What differentiates this is the kitsch colourful sets and androids that resemble the first failed line in life-size sex robot-dolls. The pace is a little plodding with an underwhelming first chase, and the film dwells on the android factory, which it is definitely pleased with, accompanied by the kind of jaunty music that makes it feel like an industry information film, setting an odd mood. Often, the effects resemble magic tricks, and there’s an amusing feeling that the film is chuffed with itself for its sci-fi illusions. This, the slightly stilted acting and the half-enthused light relief truly date it, but of course the groovy-on-a-budget datedness is part of the appeal.  

 

 

There’s a usual post-apocalyptic warning, but ‘The Time Travelers’ differs in its vision that human brilliance will not be stopped by this, that science will continue to try and find a solution to the devastation that it has also wrought. In this case, they’re building a spaceship to try and find other hospitable presumably non-mutant planets. Naturally, it doesn’t quite hold up to scrutiny – all that powerful technology and science underground and what about food if they are trapped in a barren landscape? Are the mutants plotting adversaries or simply mindless brutes? Nevertheless, its retro-charm, silliness and scattering of ideas make it interesting. There’s some gratuitous female shower-time and quite nasty android death when things come to conflict that are exploitation-adjacent.

 

With its portal conceit being influential, it’s the eventual conclusion that does raise it above the norm, committing to its time travel premise rather than going off-world, and leaving a somewhat eerie aftertaste.

 

Beyond the Time Barrier

Beyond the Time Barrier

Director – Edgar G. Ulmer

Writer – Arthur C. Pierce

1960, USA

Stars – Robert Clarke, Darlene Tompkins, Arianne Ulmer

 

A pilot (Robert Clarke) accidentally breaks the sound barrier and finds himself in the troubled future of 2024 (!), where humankind has suffered a plague (!) that has left civilisation with widespread sterility and a taste for triangular architecture.

 

But as Jonathan Lewis notes, “This use of geometry as a replacement for big budget special effects really does pay off. Look for the scene in which Trirene (Tompkins) looks at her reflection in a triangular mirror.” Ernst Fegté’s set designs are a chief enjoyment in their ambition, even if it’s just that “dressed-up silo” look. And on the one hand it’s this “future on a low budget” that is the main appeal of ‘Beyond the Time Barrier’, as much of its failings can be enjoyed as “of its time b-movie”. Therefore, your pleasure will depend upon how much you go for this, but when Christopher Lloyd says, “It can only be enjoyed ironically”, that seems a bit harsh. The failings aren’t of a lack of ambition or of technical execution: direction and design aren’t the true flaws. Some old-fashioned staidness and underwhelming acting, a lack in effects… these things are expected going in to a b-movie of the era.  Its budget can’t meet its over-reach and it may rely on tropes - it's the kind of film that made laughing at old films a passtime - but it’s swift, the dying civilisation set-up is enjoyable pulp fodder and, as implied before, Edward G Ulmer gives the material more flair than expected. 

 

Ulmer knows how to direct around deficits and silliness and allows the triangular set-design to distinguish it. The plot relies more upon paranoia and this civilisation’s central dilemma – they think Clarke is a spy from aggressors, but we don’t really get into that – so black/white villainy is less a driving force. Clarke’s first sighting of the futuristic city is memorable, although this is apparently an added insert by American-International when they took over the property: it’s memorable but arguably contradictory (I took it as just the overground deserted ruins to their underground city … but a working tower?). There are the usual allowances to make – a jet wouldn’t be able to land on an airstrip that’s 60+ years old, for example – but it would also seem that a lot of inconsistencies were because of changes made by American-International (more about these changes at Trailers From Hell). 

 

Again, it’s a film that warns you that you should never trust a second-in-command with a suspect beard, but even the Captain (Boyd ‘Red’ Morgan) is more motivated by desperation and paranoia that malevolent scheming. There’s also a gratuitous skinny-dipping scene (!), the time travel basis is under-explored and final rampage of the mutants has hints of a proto-zombie onslaught, despite unconvincing bald cap make-up.

 

No, it’s not as genuinely good and haunting as Ulmer’s ‘The Man From Planet X’ - and this is the man that made the film noir classic 'Detour' -  but as a slice of hokey b-movie retro-pulp, it’s intriguing and there’s worse.  

 

This Island Earth

 Joseph Newman, 1955, USA

One of my fondest film-watching memories is when I was living at my grandparent’s house as a preteen and getting to watch the b-movie season playing over months and months on television. I was about eleven or twelve and I loved getting into my pyjamas and watching these films on a Sunday evening before bed. I saw so many of the black-and-white creature features this way; my personal education to the drive-in horror and science-fiction era, as if I had been born decades earlier. I know for sure that I saw “The Beast from 50,000 Fathoms” and “King Kong” and “It Came From Outer Space” that way, as well as “It! The Terror Beyond Space”, “Earth versus the Flying Saucers” and “This Island Earth”.

“This Island Earth” is kind of an honorary classic: it’s not a classic due to story and execution, for it has some of that workmanlike clunkiness and flatness of the era, but the whole is definitely greater than the parts. It looks and sounds like a tacky Fifties sci-fi, but it is much more if you play into it. It has decent and decidedly adult characters; it has a nice air of menace and mystery and a fascinatingly ambiguous relationship with its aliens. The aliens are the kind you are likely to meet in “Star Trek” – intelligent, humanoid and talky with over-sized foreheads so that they can seemingly pass for human, but they are more than typically two-dimensional. They are a threat in that they are a civilisation – from Metaluna –  on the brink of being wiped out by their enemies and both need Earth’s help whilst simultaneously plotting to colonise Earth. But they are desperate rather than cruel or megalomaniacal. The film’s classic status is surely down to the fact that it is quintessential Fifties-era pulp sci-fi and that’s a lot of fun and no bad thing. It also has a slow build-up that is rewarded with a fantastic if brief visit to Metaluna itself, a gorgeous cosmic vision with comic-book colours and mutants, one which rivals “Forbidden Planet”.

“This Island Earth” is full of green rays, flying saucers, manipulative but super-smart aliens, decidedly square-jawed scientists (Rex Reason) and equally unlikely science. It looks and acts like something from an “Astounding!” magazine cover, and that’s integral to its delight. The film worries about other cultures being smarter, more manipulative and colonialist, but trusts its American square-jaws and female vulnerability to get an Earthman through an extraterrestrial encounter. It is dated, but that doesn’t seem to do it any harm. It gets better and balmier as it goes on and has the good sense to throw in some alien mutants too to spice up things.

Yes: the mutants. These insectoid aliens gave me a nightmare that I have never forgotten. They were lumbering, soundless and – well, you can’t get much more alien than insects. They don’t have much screen time, although they are plastered all over the posters, but hey are unforgettable. I dreamt that I was on the spaceship standing inside the giant transparent tubes it had to condition people to different environments; my dream was paraphrasing the spaceship and a scene from the film. One of the mutants was going crazy on the flight deck, just as in the film, and I was stuck in the tube. The difference was that there was a gap at the bottom of the tubes so that feet, ankles and lower shins were horrible exposed. The alien came attacking the tubes and I was trapped inside and, eventually, it started to attack my feet at the gap at the base of the tube. I suspect I woke up during the attack. Oh yes, it was quite a nightmare and I’ve never forgotten it. For this reason, I have quite a soft spot for “This Island Earth”.

It remains a delightful slice of pulp hokum with an odd charm all its own. It doesn’t have the resonance and deep chills of, say, “Invasion of the Body-Snatchers”, but it is old school fun and possessed of enough intelligence and gorgeous alien scenery to more than hold its own.